The present invention is generally related to refrigerated appliances, and, more particularly, to an ice cube making and dispensing device for a refrigerator.
Refrigerated appliances, such as refrigerators and freezers are generally provided with devices to hold liquid water that is converted into ice. Examples of such devices include custom-made trays or molds. For the purpose of extracting the ice cubes from the trays or molds, one technique commonly used is to take the ice cube tray out from the freezer, wet the ice cubes with water at room temperature so that the ice cubes may loosen up and be released when manually bending the tray by its ends. One may then take the trays or molds to be emptied, cleaned or refilled.
The trays are generally placed either in a corner or placed inside the freezer compartment of a domestic refrigerator, or between the de-icing tray located beneath the freezer compartment and the freezer itself. In other cases, the trays are simply placed randomly inside the freezer. Often, these devices suffer drawbacks, such as poor utilization of valuable space inside the freezer compartment, the complexity of mechanisms required for ice making and expulsion, and the lack of a user-friendly and aesthetically-pleasing design. Accordingly, there is a need for addressing the foregoing drawbacks.